Wagner representatives visit penal colonies on second round of recruitment

Recruiters from the Wagner private military company (PMC) have begun to arrive in Russian penal colonies for the second time, revisiting the same locations where they previously recruited inmates to fight in Ukraine.

Source: Russian news outlet Mediazona 

Details: The convicts the journalists talked to said that recruitment now takes place in a less solemn atmosphere: the prisoners are no longer lined up at the parade ground, and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group’s founder, does not fly in by helicopter.

The prisoners also said that two to three times fewer people agreed to go during the winter recruitment for the war than in autumn and spring, and that recruiters are being asked how many of those who previously agreed to fight came back alive.

Mediazona also notes that prisoners no longer believe the promises made by the Wagner Group representatives due to media coverage and telephone conversations with previous recruits, who have told them that only 20% of those who went to fight in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast [currently the hottest spot on Ukraine's map], are still alive.

The exact number of prisoners who are fighting for the Wagner PMC is not known.

In November 2022, Mediazona reported that Russia’s prison population had dropped by 23,000 in September and October 2022. Thereafter, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service did not update the statistics for two months, and at the end of January, it released new data showing that the number of prisoners had stopped declining after the record fall in autumn 2022.

This may indicate that the pace of recruitment at the Wagner Group has slowed, Mediazona said.

Background: The Prosecutor General's Office has served a notice of suspicion to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group.

Note: The Wagner Group first appeared in 2013-2014. Wagner mercenaries have been active in a number of countries where Russia had important interests – Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, and Ukraine. Wagnerites were reported to be committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and were known for their brutality.

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Wagner representatives took part in massacres of civilians. Inmates from Russian prisons are recruited to the PMC, as are Ukrainians who had been imprisoned in the temporarily occupied territories. Prigozhin himself is often involved in recruitment, although it was not until September 2022 that he admitted to being behind the PMC.

The sledgehammer is the distinctive symbol of the Wagner Group. Prigozhin's mercenaries have been using sledgehammers for executions since the war in Syria. There is evidence that Wagnerites beat a man to death in Syria in 2017 before dismembering the body and burning it.

In November 2022, Russian Telegram channels  posted a video showing the execution of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former inmate of Ryazan Penal Colony No. 3 and a member of the Wagner Group who surrendered to the Armed Forces of Ukraine after being sent to fight in this country. His head was smashed in with a sledgehammer.

Yevgeny Prigozhin later proposed sending a sledgehammer stained with fake blood to the European Parliament in response to the possible recognition of his group as a terrorist organisation.

In January, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) declared the Wagner Group a transnational criminal organisation. 

Read also: An "orchestra" of murderers: Who are the Wagner Group mercenaries fighting against Ukraine?

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